NBA Betting – Houston Rockets at Phoenix Suns

Houston Rockets at Phoenix Suns (-2, 216 o/u)

After losing at the buzzer against the Sacramento Kings on Sunday, the Phoenix Suns (29-24) will try to bounce back tonight when they host the Houston Rockets (35-16) at the US Airways Center in a game that will be national televised by TNT (8:00 p.m. Eastern).

The Suns have lost four of their last five – dropping games to Golden State, Memphis, Portland, and Sacramento, while downing the Utah Jazz – and have seen their cushion for the last playoff spot in the Western Conference shrink to just two games (over both New Orleans and Oklahoma City).

The last-second loss on Sunday was just the latest in a string for Phoenix this year. The team has been on the wrong end of four buzzer-beaters already.

“It’s something we have to fix. We’ve lost about three games like that at the buzzer,” said Suns guard Isaiah Thomas, under-estimating the actual number. “I have to give it to him. He knocked it down.”

Tonight, the Suns will be facing a Rockets team without star center Dwight Howard. Howard has missed large chunks of time this season due to various injuries (suiting up for just 32 of Houston’s 51 games), yet the Rockets have managed to stay the course without their defensive stopper. During Howard’s latest absence, the Rockets are a solid 5-2.

However, it looks like the loss of their main post presence is finally starting to show, especially at the defensive end of the floor. The Rockets have given up 111 and 109 points in their last two games. On Sunday, James Harden poured in 45 points against Portland, but the D had no answer for Damian Lillard and company, who left Houston with a convincing 109-98 win.

“We made an inordinate amount of mistakes defensively especially in that first half,” said Houston head coach Kevin McHale. “It was just one of those games where we weren’t really very sharp.”

The Suns are two-point favorites for tonight’s game, and the over/under is at 214.5.  Both teams dropped their last game ATS, but both have responded well to ATS losses in recent history. Houston is 13-3 ATS in their last 16 games following an ATS loss, while Phoenix is 37-17-2 ATS in their last 56 games following an ATS loss.

The trend that sticks out to me is that the Rockets have covered the spread in the last four games in this series. I like the Rockets and the points (+2).

(Photo credit: Jose Garcia (Flickr: Dwight Howard And Chandler Parsons) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)